Religious Expression In Ancient Greek Culture

Religious Expression of Greeks and Romans

Randy Golembieski

University of Phoenix

The ancient Greeks believed their gods were an immortal family. This immortal family would have a direct impact on their daily lives. They believed that these gods influenced the growth of their crops, disease epidemics, victory or defeat in war and victories in sporting events (Sacks, 2005). The Greeks felt close to their gods and expected the gods to be influenced by prayer and the sacrifice of animals and crops. Today religion is considered a private practice and separated from civil government. The ancient Greeks viewed religion expression to be practiced in public. The Greeks worshiped 12 major gods,…show more content…
Early Roman religion developed a belief in a triad of gods who shared the same temple. One example of this sharing of a temple was the gods of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva who later became known as the Capitoline Triad (Adkins & Adkins, 2004). Roman religion differed than Greek religion in that the practice of religious rituals was dictated by the government to be performed in a certain manner. The government established a hierarchy of priests and officials led by the king to make requests to perform rites and sacrifices to the gods in order to benefit the community as a whole. As the Roman community grew religion became closely related to politics and society. This created a state religion that would grow with the Roman society as gods were absorbed from other cultures including Greek gods from colonies in Italy (Adkins & Adkins, 1996). The Roman religious practice also differed than the Greeks religious expression in that the Romans believed in spirits or a divine power rather than a god with human characteristics. The Roman people were free to believe what they wanted to believe about their gods given that any rituals performed were performed in the correct manner as dictated by the government. Similarly the Romans did not have any sacred writing of religious expression early on like the Greeks. With the Roman Empire growing and adopting other religions the state religion remained the most prominent…show more content…
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